The NXR Podcast - THEOLOGY APPLIED - Is ＂Children's Church＂ Biblical？

00:00:00.000 Hi, this is Pastor Joel Webin with Right Response Ministries, and you're listening to another

00:00:04.120 episode of Theology Applied. In this episode, I was privileged to have as a special guest,

00:00:09.640 Pastor Scott Brown. He's the president of Church and Family Life. It's a family-integrated

00:00:15.620 network of churches. My church, Covenant Bible Church, is actually a part of that. If you're

00:00:21.280 looking for a family-integrated church, you should check out Church and Family Life, their website,

00:00:25.420 do a church search. If you're anywhere in the North Austin area of Texas, you should come and

00:00:29.940 check out my church, Covenant Bible Church. We'd love to have you there. All that being said,

00:00:34.440 the interview was great. We had a great conversation about the importance of bringing

00:00:38.580 your children to church and that children's ministry is not church. And so we talked about

00:00:44.620 the whole family, multi-generational ministry, especially on the Lord's day. We talked about

00:00:49.780 family worship and what that should look like on a daily basis in our homes. And then we also

00:00:54.980 talked about sphere sovereignty, that the family is a government, the authority of fathers, the

00:00:59.820 authority of mothers, and right now, the tyranny encroaching overstep of jurisdiction from civil

00:01:07.120 authorities. And so we talked about vaccines a little bit. We talked about all these different

00:01:11.120 things and how it works together for the family, that family unit being a God-glorifying community

00:01:18.580 of saints. And so I hope you enjoy. That being said, real quick, if you're able to do so,

00:01:24.080 we need your support. If you'd like to make a donation, go to Right Response Ministries

00:01:29.740 dot com. You can give a donation of any amount. We are so grateful for your giving, for your

00:01:34.900 generosity. If you're not able to make a donation, you can still support this ministry by simply

00:01:40.700 subscribing to our YouTube channel, downloading our podcast on your favorite podcast platform,

00:01:45.880 and sharing our content with your family and friends. All that being said, let's go ahead

00:01:50.540 and get started. Hope you enjoy. Applying God's word to every aspect of life. This is Theology

00:01:57.720 Applied. All right, so welcome to another episode of Theology Applied. I'm your guest,

00:02:05.980 Pastor Joel Webin, and as I've already mentioned, I'm privileged to be joined by Pastor Scott Brown

00:02:11.100 with Church and Family Life. Pastor Scott Brown, would you go ahead and just introduce yourself

00:02:15.580 and tell us a little bit about your ministry? Yeah, I'm married to Debra. I have four children

00:02:21.780 who are married. I've got 24 grandchildren. I grew up in Southern California. I spent the first

00:02:27.480 half of my life there. Now I'm in North Carolina and I'm a pastor at Hope Baptist Church here in

00:02:33.720 Wake Forest, North Carolina. And so I wear two hats typically in a given day as a local church

00:02:42.540 shepherd and also the head of Church and Family Life. Church and Family Life is dedicated to

00:02:50.620 proclaiming the sufficiency of scripture for church and family life. We're focusing on these

00:02:57.060 two institutions, the church and the family, these powerful, remarkable institutions that God

00:03:02.460 has created, the church and the family, the two discipleship and evangelistic

00:03:08.220 institutions. So we focus on both because we think that they are complementary in the way

00:03:15.760 that they function. They need one another. Churches need holy families and families need

00:03:23.060 holy churches so so that's what we do we have a network of about 500 churches around the country

00:03:28.340 we do a lot of conferences uh we mentor people we write books we do we have a weekly podcast

00:03:35.760 on issues that are impinging on the church and a family and uh so i guess that's it yeah that's

00:03:44.480 that's what i do every day well that's great um so our church is a part of church and family life

00:03:50.260 And I think probably my first introduction was probably through Votie Bauckham and some of his teachings.

00:03:59.020 And from time to time, he would reference the network, which at the time used to have another name.

00:04:04.520 What was the name that it used to have?

00:04:06.940 Right. It was the National Center for Family Integrated Churches, NCFIC.

00:04:12.660 Nobody could say it. Nobody could even pronounce it.

00:04:14.880 So we thought we'd, you know, use a name that actually people could understand, actually describe what we do.

00:04:22.220 Yeah.

00:04:23.240 Amen.

00:04:24.040 Well, the family integrated model, that's something that for a lot of people is just, as you know, completely foreign.

00:04:31.080 And it was foreign for me as well.

00:04:33.000 And by God's grace, he changed my heart.

00:04:36.220 And, you know, the short answer that I always give people, you know, is just when they say, well, how come you don't have a children's ministry, you know, or how come you don't do this?

00:04:43.600 How come you don't do that?

00:04:44.880 And I always just say, well, we believe that children should come to church.

00:04:48.440 And I think part of what's difficult to persuade people with is that people don't really have a clear biblical definition of what constitutes the church.

00:05:00.700 So they would never see it that way.

00:05:02.040 They would never see, you know, if you put your children in a separate wing of the church facilities and, you know, they have a Bible lesson, you know, and they're doing some Christian things, Bible-centered things, you know, the parents to say that you didn't bring your children to church this Lord's Day.

00:05:23.680 That would be my conviction now, but that's because I better understand what the church is.

00:05:28.980 And so I guess my question is, could you provide for our listeners a little bit of the biblical support for why children should participate with their mothers and fathers on the Lord's Day in worship?

00:05:41.860 Sure. The only positive witness that we have in Scripture is for the church gathering generationally, all ages gathering together.

00:05:53.020 The pattern is explicit in the Old Testament. It's explicit in the New Testament.

00:05:58.980 It's really the only pattern that we have.

00:06:02.120 It's one thing to say, well, there's no age segregation in the Bible.

00:06:11.020 Well, that's not actually the primary argument that we have.

00:06:13.700 Our argument is that the only thing you see in the Bible is a generational pattern of worship and discipleship.

00:06:22.920 So the only reason that we bring the whole family together in worship is because that's the only thing you see in the Bible.

00:06:33.020 So how would you respond to the antagonist who would say, well, I do believe in multi-generational discipleship, but a five-year-old isn't going to understand 75% of what the pastor is saying in his sermon.

00:06:51.460 And so that's why, right?

00:06:53.660 Because I could just, I can hear the devil's advocate saying, that's why we have a children's

00:06:58.080 ministry on Sundays, because we believe in multi-generational discipleship, but we think

00:07:02.960 it should be geared for each of those generations.

00:07:06.300 Right.

00:07:06.860 So that's pragmatic thinking, not biblical thinking.

00:07:09.300 I think that's really the heart of the matter.

00:07:12.640 But the truth is, in the Bible, you do have infants gathering with their families to hear

00:07:18.960 the word of God.

00:07:19.880 i mean in the old testament hearing the reading of the word of god you know for a half a day

00:07:24.620 in the new testament you absolutely have children in the meetings of the church when the apostle

00:07:30.900 paul was writing to the ephesian church he he addresses wives and then he addresses husbands

00:07:38.200 and then he addresses children children obey your parents in the lord honor your father and mother

00:07:44.200 The Apostle Paul believed the children were there, so he was speaking to them.

00:07:49.640 He thought all of them would be there.

00:07:52.640 That's the most natural and biblical thing.

00:07:55.920 You know, I have been on dozens, maybe probably hundreds of debates and interviews over this.

00:08:02.420 I really only ask one question.

00:08:04.240 can you show me anything in scripture where there's a positive pattern for the segregation

00:08:11.600 of age groups or life stages in the bible and the and the problem is there is none you can read the

00:08:19.100 bible to your eyes bleed and there is not it just doesn't exist so um that's that's the question

00:08:26.640 can you give me a positive witness from scripture about this pragmatic pattern and and frankly

00:08:33.720 there just there just is none um so but you and when and people people have to come up with other

00:08:39.660 things well they say well the rabbis you know the rabbis did it and i always say well our pattern

00:08:45.800 isn't the rabbis i think jesus had a lot to say about the way the rabbis were conducting the

00:08:51.120 church so and they weren't weren't positive so i don't our pattern is not the rabbis our pattern

00:08:56.660 is not the culture our pattern is not our own pragmatism our pattern is the word of god alone

00:09:01.320 Amen. Yeah, one thing that was helpful for me was, you know, around the same time that I was coming into the conviction of family integrated worship, I was also coming into the conviction of a church having a single service.

00:09:16.860 And I don't know how you feel about that, Pastor Brown, but I, for me, I just, you know, I look at the New Testament word that's used for church, ecclesia, and that it means assembly or a gathering.

00:09:28.640 And so the idea of, well, really, I mean, you know, I don't want to be too technical, but in 1 Corinthians chapter 11, when Paul is chastising the Corinthian church, he's chastising them for the manner, the heart posture, the attitude in which they were participating in the Lord's Supper.

00:09:47.280 but but i think there's also a practical concern and so what we see clearly in the text the text

00:09:53.720 is paul's concern his pastoral concern for their hearts their their their attitude and posture

00:09:59.680 towards one another that some people are showing up early and despising those who come later and

00:10:04.140 the rich despising the poor and uh some not having anything to eat and so there's certainly that

00:10:09.140 element and that's the i would be willing to admit that that's the primary element but there's still

00:10:14.220 the practical implication, which is you have two sets, two portions of the church that are showing

00:10:21.620 up at two separate times. And it seems as though one of the things that the apostle is advocating

00:10:27.180 for, he's hitting the spiritual issue of division. But I can't comprehend solving the spiritual issue

00:10:35.960 of division without doing anything about the practical issue of division. That at the end of

00:10:41.960 the day, even if our hearts are aligned and even if there's no resentment or bitterness or any of

00:10:46.700 those things, division in our hearts, when you have half of the church showing up at 9 a.m. and

00:10:51.380 then the other half of the church showing up at 11 a.m., you still have, with the Lord's Supper,

00:10:55.800 it being divided. When Paul says earlier in 1 Corinthians 10, he says, just as there is one

00:11:01.680 bread, we who are many are one. How do you do one loaf of bread at two separate times with two

00:11:09.620 separate groups of people. And I think some people would probably hear that and say, you're being

00:11:14.160 too technical or too literal interpretation of the text. But to me, it seems as though

00:11:20.860 Christ's body is not meant to be divided. And it seems as though the Lord's Supper is this sign

00:11:29.840 that is given to the church, this covenant renewal ceremony that in baptism, we enter into

00:11:37.040 covenant unity with Christ and his people. So you could say in baptism, the one joins the many,

00:11:43.880 but in the Lord's Supper, the many become one. And the Lord's Supper is the renewing,

00:11:48.980 the renewal ceremonial covenant ceremony that we participate in. And I believe it should be

00:11:56.460 weekly, that we're weekly participating in. And the symbolism, the picture is that the many who

00:12:02.920 have been scattered all week long are being made one in this sacrament or ordinance of the Lord's

00:12:08.820 Supper. And I don't know how to do that with two separate groups of people at 9 a.m. and 11 a.m.

00:12:15.820 What do you think about the single service model of the church?

00:12:20.500 Oh, I think that's absolutely the local pattern. You don't have one bread for the senior citizens, 0.76

00:12:26.960 One bread for the singles, one bread for the 13-year-olds, and one bread for the marrieds.

00:12:33.220 The church is not a fragmented organism.

00:12:38.020 The church is a family.

00:12:39.940 And because the church is a family, it should look like a family.

00:12:44.380 And as it turns out, when you have a family, you have older people, and you have younger, you have babies, and you have the whole group.

00:12:51.820 So, yeah, I think the fragmentation of the church, the fracturing of the church is really an important matter.

00:13:00.860 And, you know, what we've seen is that, you know, some children, when they're fragmented away from the worship of God, they grow up, they don't really even think the church is their church.

00:13:10.640 So they go somewhere else.

00:13:12.560 Right.

00:13:13.000 No, I completely agree.

00:13:15.780 I've heard horror stories and witnessed some of them in visiting churches where not only is it pre-K and kindergarten or even elementary, primary school, but all the way through high school.

00:13:30.680 So all the way through 18 years old, it's one thing, and there's something that can be said about this as well, but it's one thing if it's a Wednesday night youth group.

00:13:39.720 I think there is a distinction to be made when we talk about certain age-based ministries as a substitute for the Lord's Day gathering.

00:13:48.700 I think that that's a really, really big deal.

00:13:51.940 But I've been to churches, Reformed, at least in their soteriology churches, Reformed-ish churches, lowercase r, they're not confessional per se.

00:14:00.540 But I've been to these churches where during Sunday morning, the adults, the parents, and mothers and fathers are in one room, and all the way through 18 years old, they're all in different rooms, you know, your elementary, your middle school, your high school, and they would even, they would boast as though this was a positive thing, but they would say, yeah, we have a middle school pastor and a high school pastor, and they're not just doing Christian activities.

00:14:26.560 they have a sermon. Right now, the high school pastor is preaching through the book of Matthew.

00:14:32.800 And the senior pastor with the mom and dad is preaching through the book of John. And essentially,

00:14:38.860 in some of these megachurches, it's a large campus, and so it's not just a separate room,

00:14:42.920 but a separate building. And I think your children go to another church. The families,

00:14:49.300 it's not even attending the same church. You have separate pastors, you have separate sermons,

00:14:53.300 separate books of the Bible, separate buildings, and when you do that all the way through 18 years

00:14:59.140 old, that little Sally and little Johnny have never been to church with their parents.

00:15:06.860 That's just crazy to me, and it's become normative.

00:15:10.380 Yeah, this is a house of inventions. This is inventing a sociology that's contrary to the

00:15:19.400 Bible, God has really established a particular kind of sociology. And when you go and invent 0.79

00:15:26.440 new sociologies, you've really departed from scripture. In fact, I mean, even the whole

00:15:34.600 imposition of critical race theory and identity politics is a reinvention of the sociology of

00:15:41.460 the church. It completely revamps the way that everybody relates with one other. And it's

00:15:45.640 actually satanic uh because the church was the church was never meant to function according to

00:15:51.820 an identity politics uh platform the church is a family and there and there are ways that we treat

00:16:00.120 one another like the older teach the younger right that's what they do um and you have brother you

00:16:07.140 are brothers and sisters together and there's just there's just no evidence at all that the church is

00:16:14.220 a fragmented sociology it's a unified sociology and i and i really think it breaks up the unity

00:16:19.960 of the body of christ i completely agree both critical race theory and intersectionality as

00:16:26.260 well as many other things under the the large woke banner that we have today um they are they

00:16:32.940 are tools um but i like what james lindsey what he says not a brother in christ he's an atheist

00:16:38.280 but a friend. And the Lord in his mercy has used him to be a help to the church during this

00:16:45.720 difficult time. But James Lindsay says, yeah, critical race theory, intersectionality,

00:16:49.360 they're tools in the same way that a jackhammer is a tool. There are certain tools that the only

00:16:54.960 thing they do is deconstruct. They don't build anything. And so the sad reality is that these

00:17:02.140 things, it's not that they're not working. They are working. They're doing precisely what they

00:17:07.780 were forged in the fire of hell to accomplish which is division and deconstruction and so on 0.92

00:17:13.040 that note do you find do you find an irony in the sense that that we're all about racial

00:17:18.960 reconciliation and racial justice in our culture today and so much of the church has bought into

00:17:24.780 this taking its cues from the culture instead of the word of god and then you know and and so we

00:17:30.360 wouldn't even dream of something like you know racial segregation and then and then at the same

00:17:35.300 time with with vaccines and then and then with precisely what we're talking about with with ages

00:17:41.500 demographics um we're segregated we're completely segregated i mean even the church like for months

00:17:47.340 now even before the vaccines came out there you know churches decided we're going to do two

00:17:51.960 services we're going to have a mask only service without singing which i don't know how how you

00:17:56.720 defend that in scripture without you know that commands us to address you know not only god but

00:18:01.040 one another with psalms and hymns and so we're going to have one service where we administer

00:18:06.340 some of the means of grace but not all the means of grace we're deliberately choosing not to obey

00:18:11.560 all the all the things that god tells us to do when we gather together and we're going to we're

00:18:16.140 going to enforce we're going to require masks and then we're going to have another service where

00:18:20.120 masks are optional and where there is singing and and i look at that and i'm just between mass

00:18:25.300 between vaccines and then and then what we're talking about for decades the church with age

00:18:29.640 has been segregated and we talk about how you know we're all about unity and um and and but

00:18:35.820 we're number one we're going about it the wrong way because we've we've we've despised the word

00:18:41.140 of god uh but then number two we're so narrow-minded we keep thinking about unity in terms of of racial

00:18:47.300 reconciliation and and we're completely content to divide in all these other ways and and so it's

00:18:53.780 just it's just funny that like you know people who they're like how how in the world could there

00:18:57.780 have been separate water fountains you know for during jim crow era you know for white people and 0.68

00:19:03.040 black people and then and then in the next breath you see them you know essentially doing the very 0.58

00:19:08.880 same thing between the vaxxed and the unvaxxed have you seen that have you felt the irony in 0.99

00:19:13.880 some of these things oh yeah it's bizarre it's a return to the things that we turned away from

00:19:19.480 a long time ago you know we we turned away from that kind of segregation decades ago and now

00:19:26.600 people somehow for some crazy reason want to return to it but here's the here's the root of

00:19:32.000 the issue this is the root of the issue for why you have uh churches that are that segregate

00:19:38.680 the generations it's really one issue and and it's it's the reason we have people embracing

00:19:45.760 critical race theory uh the church doesn't believe that scripture is sufficient the church

00:19:52.820 believes that culture is sufficient and if you look at the great movements at least just in my

00:19:58.320 lifetime the seeker sensitive movement the emergent church movement and and and now you

00:20:04.520 have this woke movement it's it's just the same thing it's nothing different i've seen this i've

00:20:09.480 seen this already before and it's it's that the church isn't satisfied with the word of god alone

00:20:20.000 the church wants something cooler than god you're right and so that's why the church is a house of

00:20:26.740 inventions in a lot of ways we become like the roman catholic church we're inventing all these

00:20:31.340 offices we're inventing all these pilgrimages and all kinds of ways of righteousness that the bible

00:20:37.160 doesn't but they're they're thrilling to people you know give them candles give them some incense

00:20:42.780 you know give them something to thrill them give them some images you know in the wall give them

00:20:47.600 some statues that'll thrill them that'll that'll get them closer to god well those this is a house

00:20:52.340 of inventions and the the reason the church became segregated in the generations is because

00:21:00.760 it happened in in a season where the church really just wanted to be creative

00:21:07.040 and create creativity is a disaster in the church

00:21:11.020 mm-hmm no you're right i always want to remind christians that you know there's

00:21:18.020 there's a difference between the inerrancy of scripture and the sufficiency and i think there

00:21:23.100 are still many you know card-carrying evangelicals who will you know tip their hat to the inerrancy

00:21:28.520 of scripture that scripture is authoritative um that you know we believe that scripture is

00:21:33.480 um you know that it is you know sola scriptura the idea that you know scripture alone and what

00:21:38.860 we mean by that is we don't mean scripture is the only authority um because scripture itself

00:21:43.400 testifies to other authorities that god has established and instituted but what we do mean

00:21:47.840 is that scripture is the highest authority and it's the only infallible authority so it's the

00:21:52.640 only authority that that never errs and it is the highest authority and many christians would would

00:21:57.600 respond to that by saying yes and amen um the problem is when we get to the sufficiency of

00:22:03.860 scripture and the reality is it's you know christians they think that they're being faithful

00:22:07.620 because they would say, well, I would never contradict the authority of Scripture.

00:22:12.620 But you can effectively, in effect, you can completely bypass the authority of Scripture

00:22:19.360 by simply saying that the Scripture doesn't apply to this or to that.

00:22:23.780 So you're recognizing, tipping your hat in word, you're paying credence to the authority of Scripture.

00:22:31.560 But in action, if you don't hold to the sufficiency of Scripture for all of life,

00:22:37.180 then then it doesn't matter if it's authoritative it would be the equivalent you know a good analogy

00:22:43.080 or illustration would it be the equivalent of you know having a um a sword on the mantle of

00:22:48.680 your fireplace at home and it's it's encased in some kind of glass you know glass case and it's

00:22:54.380 you know it's a double-edged sword you know and it's sharp and it's you know and and you brag

00:23:00.040 about it with your children your grandchildren you know as you gather around the fireplace maybe

00:23:04.180 it's an old war relic that you used you know decades in the past and this is the sword that

00:23:08.680 i that i've used in this context in that context and look look at its beauty look at the craftsmanship

00:23:13.880 look at its effectiveness all these kinds of things um but the that that's that's the inerrancy

00:23:20.340 of scripture but the sufficiency is when you actually you know open the glass case and and

00:23:26.180 take the sword down and use it and i think that's the problem is that there's so many things especially

00:23:31.960 in the last 18 months that have come our way. 1.00

00:23:34.880 And Christians, while still acknowledging 0.98

00:23:36.960 that the scripture is authoritative, 0.98

00:23:39.520 they have no earthly idea how to apply the scripture to,

00:23:45.000 and they just don't think it does.

00:23:46.860 I think they just,

00:23:47.660 they don't think the scripture applies to vaccines.

00:23:50.040 They don't think it applies to pandemics.

00:23:52.800 They don't think it applies to the civil government

00:23:55.260 or the only application that they can see

00:23:56.920 is we always submit, no matter what has ever handed down.

00:24:01.200 And they don't think it applies on the Lord's Day.

00:24:04.420 And that's been something that we've seen for decades.

00:24:06.560 You're right.

00:24:06.840 It's pragmatism.

00:24:07.820 We come to the church thinking it's a blank canvas for our own creative license and freedom.

00:24:13.720 And we don't think that the Word of God actually tells us how to worship, that it conducts our affairs and especially our Lord's Day gathering.

00:24:22.300 And so it's certainly a problem.

00:24:24.520 And for me, understanding what constitutes church was a really, I think the same mindset, the same wrong principles that allowed us to segregate the church based off of age for the decades was the same mindset that allowed many Christians and sadly many pastors to have completely, to have consciences that were completely at ease when it came to live streaming their church services for months on end.

00:24:52.260 with no sense of urgency that we've got to get back to gathering

00:24:55.280 because we can't answer the question, what is church?

00:25:01.180 And I would say, and maybe you can add to this, Pastor Scott,

00:25:04.600 but I would say that church is the gathering of the saints on the Lord's Day.

00:25:09.380 The Lord's Day is the Christian Sabbath.

00:25:11.580 And so Christ, he did not abrogate the Sabbath, but he did not remove it,

00:25:16.500 but he renewed the Sabbath from the last day of the week to the first day of the week

00:25:20.080 by virtue of his resurrection and his appearance to the apostles.

00:25:24.300 And so it's the gathering of the saints, young and old, on the Lord's Day.

00:25:28.900 It's the ecclesia, one assembly, one gathering of all the saints together

00:25:33.660 on the Lord's Day, the first day of the week,

00:25:36.200 for the administering of the ordinary means of grace,

00:25:38.740 which is to publicly preach the word, publicly pray the word,

00:25:42.640 publicly sing the word, and also publicly see the word, S-E-E,

00:25:48.040 in the only ordinances that have been given to us by Christ

00:25:52.600 that are by sight, which would be baptism and the Lord's Supper.

00:25:57.260 And we don't live by sight, but we live by faith.

00:26:00.000 And faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God,

00:26:03.740 which is why we don't have images.

00:26:05.620 That's why we adhere to the second commandment.

00:26:07.900 And the Protestant church has rejected Rome 0.64

00:26:10.780 that fills its cathedrals with all of these things by sight.

00:26:15.040 However, the Lord has given us these two things that are visible, that tell us something about Christ and his people and the covenant that he's made with us.

00:26:26.120 And so I would say that's what it is, the Lord's Day gathering of all the saints together, one gathering, one ecclesia for publicly preaching the word, publicly praying the word, publicly singing the word, and publicly seeing the word in baptism and the Lord's Supper.

00:26:40.040 And wherever that is not happening, if that's not occurring, I would contend that that's simply not church, that church has been defined for us.

00:26:51.960 And so if I'm sending my children to another room and that's not happening, it's not the gathering of the saints on the Lord's day for the preaching, the praying, the singing and the seeing of the word of God, all word centric.

00:27:04.100 then I am sending my children to some other place than church. Would you agree with that definition?

00:27:11.040 Would you add anything to that? No, I think that's exactly it. And the problem that we have

00:27:16.400 been facing in evangelicalism is it's exactly as you said. People have been content to accept

00:27:25.140 inerrancy as an intellectual proposition, but they don't want God to tell them what to do,

00:27:31.880 and particularly what to do on the Lord's day.

00:27:35.080 You can't tell me what to do.

00:27:37.980 But the truth is God wants to control your life.

00:27:40.260 He wants to control your time.

00:27:41.680 That's why he sets aside one day in seven.

00:27:44.580 He wants to control your time.

00:27:46.500 And he's controlling your time by saying,

00:27:48.160 work six days and then come and worship me one day.

00:27:51.960 And I think it's really a matter of submission and authority

00:27:55.560 and the desire that we have to hold an intellectual proposition

00:28:01.360 like inerrancy and and and call ourselves christians but yet not really being willing

00:28:08.420 to say lord what would you have me do i want to do the things that you said we should do

00:28:13.880 in the church and in the family and at work and in every part of life right right it's the regular

00:28:20.740 principle of worship but really it's the regular principle for for all of life that god um there

00:28:28.300 there are choices that are made available to us. You know, there's nothing in the word of God that

00:28:32.440 says, you know, thou, thou must take this job over that job. But the reality is even with that

00:28:37.400 example that I just gave, uh, well, let's look at these two companies and let's look at the ethics

00:28:42.840 behind them and the principles. And let's also look at what they pay and the type of work that

00:28:46.680 I would be doing and what's more glorifying to God. What did they pay? What allows for me to

00:28:50.420 better provide for my family? Uh, what's the work schedule that one makes me work on Sunday,

00:28:55.460 right and one doesn't require me and so you know for me i i you know i used to be charismatic i

00:29:01.380 don't know if you're familiar with jack deer uh but i i was a part of his church uh once upon a

00:29:06.260 time when i was in college and helped with the prophetic teams and those kind of things and

00:29:10.720 um and then slowly but surely the lord you know he just he brought me into calvinism and

00:29:15.600 complementarianism and he brought me into congregationalism and and uh cessationism

00:29:21.120 and all these notorious, infamous C words is what I call them, all the bad C words.

00:29:27.520 And the big C word is confessionalism.

00:29:29.820 And so it took me a long time, but eventually I became Reformed Baptist and confessional.

00:29:34.720 But one of the things that helped me to kind of embrace cessationism is I just realized that what you're saying,

00:29:43.040 the sufficiency of god's word that what i used to see as prophecy i i now realize that there's

00:29:50.800 not one prophetic word that i ever got for someone um that could not have been arrived at

00:29:57.400 equally or better by simply the word plus providence the word plus providence and i

00:30:05.660 really that that is how god guides his people he does it through special revelation first and

00:30:10.660 foremost, but then also in natural revelation that these two things are too powerful. So you

00:30:17.900 think that like, well, but the Bible doesn't, yeah, but God is directing his people. He is a

00:30:23.120 shepherd. He is guiding his sheep very meticulously, with much more control, like you said, than I

00:30:30.260 think we're willing to recognize or able to recognize. And so when I look at the word of God

00:30:35.720 and all of its commands, like for me, I left California. And when people say, why did you

00:30:40.280 leave california i would say the word of god um because the word of god tells me that that uh

00:30:46.260 titus 2 uh talks about uh what what women should be older women training younger women and teaching 0.65

00:30:51.760 them to to submit to their husbands to love their children um but then also talks about uh working

00:30:57.580 at home and so i i i i want my wife to be able to be at home and then looking at the word of god

00:31:03.220 fathers do not provoke your children to wrath but rather you know train them up and then and so i

00:31:07.760 is i'm responsible for my children's education and and it must be a distinctly christian education

00:31:13.500 that i give them whether it be homeschooling or classical christian school outside the home but

00:31:17.980 either way my wife needs to be at home to teach the children um or i i have to be able to afford

00:31:24.480 the tuition for a private school um and then you know and then wanting to a good man leaves an

00:31:30.120 inheritance for his not only his children but his children's children and although it can be nothing

00:31:34.620 less than a spiritual inheritance, I believe that it does include more, that it includes building

00:31:40.940 wealth and leaving a material inheritance for your children. Money is not evil. It's the love

00:31:46.460 of money that is evil. And money can be used to do wonderful things for the glory of God. And so

00:31:50.840 as I was looking at all this, and then the lifelong command, you know, not children in the

00:31:55.620 home obey their parents, but even grown children are called to honor thy father and thy mother.

00:32:00.440 And as my parents begin to age and my wife's parents begin to age, you know, they weren't going to be able to retire in San Diego, California.

00:32:09.280 And so we wanted to be closer to them so that we could care for them.

00:32:12.480 Like 1 Timothy chapter 5, that children should give some return to their parents for this is pleasing in the sight of God.

00:32:18.320 And so as I just constructed, you know, looking at the word of God and then looking at its real application in terms of this is how much money it's going to cost to obey Jesus.

00:32:28.220 and you might say well there are people who are poor in china and north korea that obey jesus

00:32:33.580 yeah that that's absolutely true the difference is they're stuck i i had a choice i didn't have

00:32:39.120 to live in california i didn't have to live by the beach i had a choice and so there's the

00:32:43.300 providence piece so between the word of god special revelation and the providence piece

00:32:47.600 and then looking at my budget and looking at how much i was going to be able to make and what i'd

00:32:51.500 be able to do and then that doesn't even bring into question what my taxes were going to in

00:32:55.780 california and what i was supporting and so all these things uh it became as though it was almost

00:33:02.200 as clear so there were actually a verse in the bible that said joel webben thou shalt move to

00:33:07.660 texas and leave california you know and and so my point is the word of god is sufficient it just it

00:33:13.120 takes work it you know what i mean it takes study do you have any comment on that and it yeah and

00:33:19.720 And it takes a heart that says, Lord, I want to do what you want me to do.

00:33:26.320 I mean, I've seen this happen in so many people's lives, just like the way you've just described it.

00:33:31.440 Lord, I want to raise my children the way that you said.

00:33:37.620 I mean, in fact, an entire shift in thousands of people's thinking was when they realized the Bible said, be fruitful and multiply.

00:33:47.780 and there there were people that said wow lord if that's if you say that's good i want to do that

00:33:57.300 you know i want to be a living picture of what's in the word of god i don't want to go and invent

00:34:03.100 my own life you know it's the heart that says lord i came to you because i needed you to lead me

00:34:07.780 and that's that's really the whole matter of of the sufficiency of scripture

00:34:13.660 that you you think scripture is all you need and so as you navigate your way through life you're

00:34:21.040 always looking to the word of god and you you know you describe the worship of god in the church you

00:34:26.800 know there's been a great return to those simple means of grace and it's it's so important you know

00:34:32.600 that we do that i mean john knox uh said you know all all word all inventions of man in the worship

00:34:41.040 of God, our idolatry.

00:34:44.420 That's what it is.

00:34:45.420 I wrote a little book called Counterfeit Worship a few years ago about Knox, particularly.

00:34:51.040 But it's just critical that we understand that.

00:34:54.600 Do we want to be creative or do we humble ourselves before the Lord and do what he told

00:35:03.940 us to do in all of its simplicity?

00:35:06.140 Or are we going to create a house of inventions in our homes, in our churches, and in everything else that we do?

00:35:14.660 Right. Amen.

00:35:16.380 John Knox, the great Scottish reformer, is the one who also said that resistance to tyranny is submission to God.

00:35:24.200 There you go.

00:35:26.060 We need pastors and Christians to be studying guys like John Knox.

00:35:32.720 I think we just weren't prepared for the last 18 months.

00:35:37.100 The church was just not ready for this.

00:35:40.360 All of us, at least myself, I'll speak for myself,

00:35:43.960 quickly trying to learn theologically in 15 minutes

00:35:50.880 what I should have studied and learned over the past 15 years.

00:35:55.740 And statements like, I'm sure you heard someone that I appreciate

00:36:00.460 a lot of his ministry, but, you know, he recently said, you know, well, if as long as it's not,

00:36:04.940 you know, the government's not telling us to do something that God, you know, forbids or

00:36:09.440 refusing to allow us to do something that God commands, you know, causing us to sin.

00:36:14.580 So, you know, then it's okay. And the example that was used is, you know, if the government

00:36:19.420 tells us to put pinwheels on the side of our heads, you know, wear a pinwheel on the side

00:36:23.100 of our head, then I'm going to wear the pinwheel. And I was just thinking, that's the product

00:36:27.580 of someone who's lived in a nation

00:36:29.800 that's had a lot of freedom.

00:36:31.880 You would never have been saying that.

00:36:34.840 Yeah, that person is also not thinking clearly at all.

00:36:38.720 Probably because of the pinwheel

00:36:40.040 on the side of his head. 0.95

00:36:41.560 It's probably cutting off his brain.

00:36:43.020 Well, for instance, let's just say

00:36:45.360 that you, as a pastor of your church,

00:36:48.220 are telling everybody in the church

00:36:50.220 to wear pinwheels to work.

00:36:52.880 Right.

00:36:53.280 Or you start telling the wives 0.99

00:36:56.440 how to dress well i'm pretty confident that fellow would reject that it's not sinful to 0.55

00:37:05.380 wear a pinwheel and it's probably not sinful to dress the way you say that they should dress but

00:37:11.720 the problem is uh if you if you do that you've stepped out of your jurisdiction and so it a

00:37:20.560 jurisdiction may command you to do something that's not sinful but it's not their jurisdiction

00:37:27.220 to command you that's the deal and and and everybody believes that every pastor believes

00:37:32.680 that even the ones that say well i'll obey you know just as long as i don't have to disobey the

00:37:39.060 lord they they're not thinking clearly no you're absolutely right i i want to address that a little

00:37:44.500 bit more because you've had some really great stuff on your podcast about sphere sovereignty

00:37:49.120 and jurisdictions, and, you know, God instituted the home, the church, and the state, and I think

00:37:56.480 part of the problem is that we are, as a nation, and the church, sadly, is proving to not be much

00:38:03.900 of an exception to this, but I think the average American is, we're statist, and we see the, you

00:38:11.160 know, the civil magistrate, first, we don't understand the doctrine of the lesser civil

00:38:15.040 magistrate and we could talk about that but we see the civil magistrate as um as just this this

00:38:20.600 this the highest power in in all of human society and all the land and you know and we point to

00:38:28.380 something like romans 13 and we miss exegete it and we say you know well it says submit um but i

00:38:33.340 can point to hebrews chapter 13 that says you know um obey your leaders talking about talking about

00:38:40.360 elders, spiritual leaders in the church, which is another human institution that's divinely

00:38:45.780 instituted by God, no less legitimate than the state. And I have verses that I can point to

00:38:52.600 that specifically say, obey your leaders in the Lord, for they are keeping watch over your souls

00:38:59.800 as men who must give an account. So let them do this with joy and not a groaning, for that would

00:39:05.860 be of no benefit to you. And so I can point to something like that and say, hey, well, the Bible

00:39:09.360 says that you're called to submit to me. And so if I tell you what to wear to work, as long as

00:39:15.280 I'm not telling you to sin, I'm just telling you that you should wear a blue suit instead of a

00:39:20.640 black suit. I'm not telling you to be immodest or anything like that. So we can make that argument

00:39:25.420 all day long and no one would tolerate it. What would they do? I'd be on the news. I'd be picked

00:39:31.660 up by you know yeah so so what is the difference go ahead sorry i i just i just wrote a short book

00:39:39.160 on this whole subject that is the illustration is forced vaccinations it's called forced

00:39:45.120 vaccinations uh thinking biblically it's a short book but i what i try to do is explain the

00:39:53.640 jurisdictional argument uh it's exactly what you're saying uh there are jurisdictions have

00:40:00.600 particular authority but the government has no authority to tell you what to inject into your

00:40:06.260 body god has actually given that authority to you under his headship that your body belongs to the

00:40:13.820 lord it doesn't really belong to the government belongs to the lord you a christian can't do

00:40:18.700 anything that harms his body or the or that he thinks harms his body and god has given that

00:40:25.060 jurisdiction to you and if your parents he's given that jurisdiction to parents for their

00:40:30.320 children the government can't tell your the government doesn't own your children these are

00:40:35.080 just the simple jurisdictional structures that that we find in the bible and god has created

00:40:41.520 society under this matter of various jurisdictions and then you have the church and the family and

00:40:47.720 the state and you have the individual and you have the employer as well yeah you're absolutely right

00:40:53.460 and i think the problem is and and i think you would agree with this the problem is that people

00:40:57.420 see the church that they don't see these as sovereign spheres that are side by side and

00:41:02.300 there are cases where there's overlap right and you know but for the most part these are autonomous

00:41:07.740 sovereign spheres of authority that that exist they coexist side by side but that's not how the

00:41:15.580 church sees it i think subconsciously a lot of people couldn't even verbalize or articulate this

00:41:20.440 but subconsciously they think that the state is here and the church is underneath it rather than

00:41:26.900 seeing that both the state, the church, and the home are beside one another at times,

00:41:32.860 like a Venn diagram at times overlapping, but each distinct and autonomous and on equal

00:41:39.180 planes, I would argue.

00:41:41.420 And the only thing that they're under is Christ.

00:41:45.080 And I've said this a few times, but it's been said, Christ, not Caesar, is head of

00:41:50.880 the church.

00:41:51.440 And I would say yes and amen, and I would go further and say, Christ, not Caesar, is

00:41:55.180 head of the state.

00:41:56.900 That Caesar works for God.

00:41:59.520 Romans 13, he's God's deacon.

00:42:01.980 And so Christ is over all and in all.

00:42:05.260 Ephesians 1, verse 22, God has set him not just as head of the church,

00:42:10.440 but the head of all things to the benefit of the church.

00:42:14.760 But Christians don't see that.

00:42:16.060 They see it as Christ, and they wouldn't say this, 0.96

00:42:19.280 but I think implicitly this is what our actions and our compliance in many areas has revealed,

00:42:24.760 is we see it as there's christ there's caesar the state and then there's you know the church or

00:42:32.040 maybe the family and that you know but the church is way down here and the family is way down here

00:42:37.780 and we don't realize that these are not only are they sovereign autonomous spheres but they are

00:42:43.020 autonomous governments there's spheres of government there's the familial government that

00:42:48.080 has a head an authority the husband is the head of his wife you know and um and then in a church

00:42:54.100 There's an ecclesiastical government.

00:42:56.100 We have church officers of elders and deacons who are ordained as, they have authority in

00:43:03.000 the church.

00:43:03.560 But in each of these arenas, the authority is limited.

00:43:07.660 It's always a, it's never an inherent authority, it's a vested authority.

00:43:13.180 And the moment that authority, the jurisdiction is breached, the authority is gone.

00:43:18.260 It's not there.

00:43:19.300 And would you agree with that?

00:43:20.660 Yeah. And I would expand on that a little bit by saying, by talking about it like this. You have the government has a little bit of authority over lots of people. The church has more authority than the government over a smaller number of people.

00:43:40.480 the family has lots of authority nearly unlimited authority over a very very small number of people

00:43:49.900 so that's really in this in this authority structure you you both have you you both have

00:43:56.260 the definition of the authority and you also have the scope of the authority and that's that's just

00:44:02.460 simply thinking christianly that's all that is and um so that's why the government doesn't have

00:44:09.180 exclusive authority jesus christ has exclusive authority over all the other authorities so you

00:44:15.040 have this great authority over all the jurisdictions and then you have uh the the definition and the

00:44:23.120 scope on each jurisdiction that's the way that god designed it and yeah you know this the state

00:44:30.520 is given the sword the family is given the rod the church is given the word of god i mean those

00:44:35.000 are the those are the those are the means of of instruction that's right and even that you could

00:44:41.900 argue i heard someone say just the other day that the individual is given the conscience

00:44:45.820 um that you know that even the conscience it governs and regulates and disciplines the

00:44:53.300 individual it restrains him from certain things um and so at every level whether it be self-leadership

00:45:00.300 or a husband's leadership of his wife and children

00:45:02.740 or like you're saying, a civil magistrate

00:45:05.620 and his leadership in the civil realm

00:45:07.840 or an elder in a church.

00:45:10.940 At every level, there is a degree of authority

00:45:13.940 and then there's also a tool, an instrument

00:45:16.380 that God has given to them

00:45:17.900 in order to wield that authority.

00:45:21.060 And for the church, it's a sword.

00:45:23.520 It's just a spiritual sword.

00:45:24.940 It's that double-edged, it's the word of God.

00:45:27.260 For Caesar, it is the sword.

00:45:29.640 and a physical sword. 0.90

00:45:31.780 And with the father and the mother in the home, 0.82

00:45:34.700 it's the rod with the children,

00:45:36.840 which is such a beautiful...

00:45:38.640 The reason why I love that is because it's so simple.

00:45:41.720 There's so many times where I just feel like,

00:45:44.800 you know, you doubt the promises of God,

00:45:46.700 bringing it back to parenting in the home.

00:45:48.520 You doubt the promises of God.

00:45:49.780 You're like, my two-year-old,

00:45:51.560 my two-year-old is a rebel.

00:45:55.540 You know, and there's times where it's just,

00:45:58.040 you know, you spank them

00:45:59.160 And you don't want to break their will, but you do want to harness their will and shape their will. 0.82

00:46:05.860 And you spank them, and then you're praying for them, praying over them.

00:46:10.700 You're disciplining, you're exhorting, you're encouraging, you're loving, you're nourishing, you're teaching.

00:46:15.380 We're doing family worship every single night in our home.

00:46:18.560 You know, well, that's not true.

00:46:20.580 We are striving for every single night.

00:46:22.620 I always encourage people, make your goal daily.

00:46:25.620 That way you at least hit four.

00:46:26.980 If you don't have a daily goal, then it's going to happen once a week.

00:46:31.500 That's right.

00:46:31.900 By us making a nightly goal, a daily goal, we usually hit four to five times on average.

00:46:37.760 We always try to make sure that one of those times, because we do it in the evening, is the Lord's Day.

00:46:43.220 Because right now we're a new church plant.

00:46:44.580 We don't have an evening service.

00:46:47.540 Eventually, I want to have an evening service, not for a second group of people to attend,

00:46:51.860 but for the same group of people to attend church twice, because it's not just the Lord's hour, but the Lord's Day.

00:46:56.980 And so anyways, all that being said, but believing the promises of God that rebelling is bound up in the heart of a child and the rod will remove it far from them.

00:47:05.720 That is such a relieving, delivering, hope-filled promise that if I just obey God's word in this arena, that he's made this promise and he's faithful.

00:47:23.080 Real quick, I'd love to pick your brain on this.

00:47:25.400 how should we do family worship? How did you do family worship with your children? And now with

00:47:30.940 your grandchildren, senior children do that. How do you do family worship in your home?

00:47:35.860 Very simply, we would get up in the morning and we would read the Bible. We read four chapters.

00:47:44.280 We read through the Bible nearly every year, maybe 16, 17 years of raising our children.

00:47:53.800 And I would ask pretty much one question.

00:47:57.880 What wonderful thing did you see in the word of God?

00:48:02.320 And then we would pray and sometimes we would sing.

00:48:06.340 My view is make it simple.

00:48:09.480 You know, you know, dad doesn't have to create a sermon for everything.

00:48:13.500 Just read the Bible.

00:48:14.300 The word of God is so powerful.

00:48:16.100 You want your children.

00:48:17.260 Don't let your children leave home without the whole counsel of God.

00:48:20.660 They need to see the whole sweep of redemptive history.

00:48:23.040 so they can see the greatness and the kindness and the mercy of God.

00:48:28.320 So that's what I think.

00:48:30.680 The Puritans took the morning and evening pattern. 1.00

00:48:34.240 I think that's a really good pattern.

00:48:36.660 But it's like you said, if you don't commit to do it, you're never going to do it.

00:48:42.060 There are 400 things that wage war against your gathering together to read the Word of God.

00:48:48.160 So you just have to say, we're going to do this.

00:48:50.260 We're going to do this at this time, regardless.

00:48:53.040 of what else is happening, whatever phones are ringing, whatever.

00:48:57.220 And so, yeah, I, but I think simplicity is really the way to think about it.

00:49:03.320 Yeah, that's great. Yeah. I don't, I just wanted them to see the beauty of Jesus.

00:49:09.520 That's what I wanted.

00:49:10.420 Amen. I was going to say as much of a preacher as I am, I, I, I, I don't,

00:49:15.400 I don't take the time to write a sermon for our every, you know,

00:49:18.920 every evening for worship, but we were very similar. We,

00:49:22.480 What I'll do is I'll read the text.

00:49:25.400 Every night I'll read the same chapter.

00:49:27.260 Right now we're preaching through the Psalms on the Lord's Day with our church.

00:49:31.080 And so I'll take that Psalm that we're coming towards on the Lord's Day and just read the same Psalm each evening.

00:49:38.040 And then we have the Follow Me Bible.

00:49:41.100 Joel Beakey is one of the lead editors on it.

00:49:43.380 And so it doesn't have any images of Christ, which I appreciate.

00:49:47.820 And so we'll do the Follow Me Bible, a story from that.

00:49:52.480 And then we use Keech's Catechism.

00:49:55.500 It's a Reformed Baptist catechism.

00:49:57.360 And so we're doing that.

00:49:58.180 And then some memory verses.

00:49:59.580 And then all the children, we take turns praying.

00:50:04.540 And one thing I also want to add, so you're a Reformed Baptist, right?

00:50:08.740 Are you 1689?

00:50:10.340 Yeah.

00:50:11.160 Yep.

00:50:11.760 So with being Reformed Baptist, I'm about as covenantal as you can get without baptizing babies.

00:50:20.260 So I'm about as far as you could go, you know, in the covenantal vein.

00:50:25.920 And when it comes to, you know, my children who are young right now, so I have a three-year-old, a two-year-old, and a 10-month-old.

00:50:33.440 And with my children, you know, I always, you know, I just preached a sermon on this from Psalm 71 last Sunday.

00:50:40.940 But I always am trying to train my children as Christians, not pagans.

00:50:49.660 Absolutely.

00:50:50.260 And, you know, and so like, so, you know, even like a question, like teaching them the Lord's prayer does, you know, should a two-year-old pray our father, right?

00:51:02.080 Even if it, you know, it's like, well, I'm not sure if they're regenerate yet.

00:51:05.440 You would say yes, right?

00:51:06.740 Absolutely.

00:51:07.100 I would say yes, too.

00:51:08.160 I would say yes, too.

00:51:09.320 And, you know, but coming from my Baptist background, there was a time when I would have said no.

00:51:13.180 There was a time when I would have said, yeah, but they're not, you know, they're not regenerate.

00:51:17.440 And those kind of what could you help me with how would you make that argument for parents?

00:51:23.880 You know, because the way that I would verbalize it is like parents should raise their children not just to be Christians, but but as Christians, how would pastorally what would you say to parents about that?

00:51:34.320 Well, parents are under divine commands to teach their children when they sit in the house, when they walk by the way, when they lie down, and when they rise up.

00:51:43.140 Parents are obligated before God to bring them up in the training and the admonition of what?

00:51:49.300 The Lord.

00:51:51.100 So, yes, children should memorize scripture.

00:51:54.120 They should sing.

00:51:55.360 When a child comes into the church, you should teach them to sing.

00:51:59.560 In fact, I wrote a book about how to bring your family to church called The Family at Church.

00:52:04.320 And I've got chapters in her on singing, helping your children sing.

00:52:08.220 But they're going to sing Christian words.

00:52:12.000 And when they're converted, those words will be so powerful for them.

00:52:19.480 Those words will come alive like never before.

00:52:22.760 They sang them when they were unbelievers in their youth.

00:52:26.320 And then they get converted.

00:52:27.760 And then they just are absolutely thrilled because God's changed their heart.

00:52:33.700 So it's, you know, I mean, think of Charles Spurgeon.

00:52:37.360 His parents filled him up with the knowledge of God.

00:52:40.360 That formed a tremendous foundation for his whole life.

00:52:44.740 You know, his parents made him read the Puritans and all kinds of stuff like that.

00:52:48.880 Right. 0.99

00:52:49.180 Well, that was a good thing.

00:52:52.060 And they were filling up the well of his soul.

00:52:56.960 So, yes, absolutely.

00:52:58.440 And children can pray.

00:53:01.440 children should pray in their families and i i completely agree i was yeah go ahead yeah no i

00:53:09.020 i completely agree and i think um you know i some of the psalms that you know where where the

00:53:14.380 psalmist says you know from from my youth or even more than that it's like um sure from my mother's

00:53:20.460 womb you know like like from infancy and i think you know the famous quote by polycarp that you

00:53:26.900 know the disciple of the apostle john where right before he was martyred you know 80 and six years

00:53:32.120 have i served thee he has never done me any harm you know how how now could i then blaspheme my

00:53:39.040 my my savior and my king my savior and uh and most you know most historians and biblical

00:53:46.160 commentators and theologians would all argue that um that 86 years was the length of his

00:53:52.580 entire life that um so essentially you know polycarp is saying i've served christ from

00:53:58.680 my birth and uh and i think that's the testimony is it is it that's the testimony that we want for

00:54:05.220 our children is i i i cannot remember a single day that uh that i did not profess jesus as lord

00:54:12.800 and i tell parents all the time they're like well yeah but god's sovereign over salvation you know

00:54:17.300 And I'm like, yeah, God's sovereign over salvation, but why do we do evangelism?

00:54:22.580 The same God who's sovereign over the ends of people's salvation is sovereign over the means.

00:54:29.500 And the means that God has granted to save people ordinarily is through the church and the family.

00:54:36.500 And so that if someone is submerged in a gospel-preaching church and also a gospel-preaching family,

00:54:43.120 then I think we should expect that God is going to save them.

00:54:49.020 Not because we, by our good parenting, have made ourselves entitled to God's salvation,

00:54:56.920 but because God saves through ordinary means.

00:55:00.660 And so I always think, you know, if God didn't intend to save my children, 0.96

00:55:03.860 then he would have given them to my pagan neighbors. 0.98

00:55:05.940 I believe God gave my children to me precisely because he wants to save them, and the same God who has predestinated their salvation predestinated the means by which they would come to that salvation, placing them in a God-fearing home. 0.55

00:55:24.120 And I think the sad thing is many parents, and I don't want to make light of this because it's tragic, but many parents would say, we can't believe that our son went off the rails.

00:55:34.320 Our daughter is not serving the Lord and has renounced Christ and doesn't even claim to be a follower of Jesus.

00:55:41.600 And we're not trying to be mean-spirited, but it's because we love children, we love parents, and those are tragic stories that we don't want to see happen.

00:55:49.400 And I think we have to, in a loving way, we have to address and say, okay, so you say you raised your children to fear the Lord.

00:55:58.140 But you never brought them to church.

00:56:00.340 You never had church in the home.

00:56:02.500 You never had family worship.

00:56:05.400 And if you did, for every 15 minutes of reading scripture with your kids, you subjected them to 40 hours a week of public school.

00:56:14.760 Right.

00:56:15.520 That has a worldview.

00:56:17.280 It's not just math.

00:56:18.140 There is no neutrality.

00:56:20.300 Could you speak on that for a moment, Scott?

00:56:23.080 What do you think about, can a Christian send their children to public school? 1.00

00:56:28.500 No. 1.00

00:56:30.800 Great answer.

00:56:32.200 Can you flesh it out a little bit?

00:56:34.180 Yeah, I'll quote Lodi Bauckham.

00:56:36.660 He said this probably over a decade ago, that the public school system is pagan by federal mandate.

00:56:45.500 and christians christians cannot send their children to to learn paganism christians are

00:56:51.900 commanded by god to bring their children up in the training of the admonition of the lord to teach the

00:56:56.620 whole counsel of god so um the student always becomes like his teacher and with the schools

00:57:04.300 that we have going now in our public system which are so corrupt they're so sexualized they're 0.98

00:57:10.260 They're insane. 0.88

00:57:12.440 They're telling kindergartners to try to figure out what gender they are. 0.62

00:57:16.480 So, no, you cannot, if you're a Christian, you cannot send your children into this system. 0.97

00:57:24.060 Amen. 1.00

00:57:24.860 Yeah, I think Bauckham also, he said, don't be surprised. 0.86

00:57:28.600 You know, if you send your kids off to Caesar, don't be surprised when they come back as Romans. 0.73

00:57:33.880 Yeah. 0.98

00:57:34.720 Yeah.

00:57:35.400 That's just, it's the myth of neutrality.

00:57:37.320 I think that's what it is.

00:57:38.220 It's just that parents, it's science, it's math, and they don't recognize, yeah, but

00:57:44.340 there is a way of teaching math to the glory of God, and there is a way of teaching math

00:57:48.980 that blasphemes God, that all truth is God's truth.

00:57:54.220 And so I would be of kind of the Francis Schaeffer, Kuyperian mindset of like, let's, instead

00:58:01.500 of burning the Babylonian libraries, like let's plunder them for whatever riches they

00:58:06.780 might have um but but you're only able to do that in in a way that brings any edification at all

00:58:14.140 when when your worldview is secure uh when when that when that's first put in place and you're

00:58:20.280 able to discern you're able to extract truth without without getting poison in in in the

00:58:28.400 process and i think that's part of the the problem is this buying into the myth of neutrality and

00:58:34.000 And then part of the problem also is we miscategorize our own children.

00:58:40.240 I've heard parents use the reasoning of, well, I want my children to—I don't want to shelter them.

00:58:46.260 I want them to be like missionaries.

00:58:48.340 And I would just say, they're not missionaries.

00:58:51.660 They're children.

00:58:53.220 You be a missionary.

00:58:54.600 You be a missionary.

00:58:55.600 Your five-year-old's not a missionary.

00:58:57.340 What are you talking about?

00:58:58.640 A missionary, that's—what kind of language does the Bible use?

00:59:01.220 Like, good soldiers of Christ Jesus.

00:59:03.200 What parent puts their five-year-old in an army to be a soldier?

00:59:06.800 Your children can be soldiers later, but right now they're children.

00:59:10.880 And so the idea of like, well, you're sheltering your children.

00:59:13.360 Yeah, I'm sheltering my children.

00:59:15.900 I mean, you can look at nature, natural revelation.

00:59:19.780 That's what even animals instinctively do is they shelter and protect their children. 0.98

00:59:25.780 We want them to be like arrows, and we're going to shoot them out one day, but not yet.

00:59:31.800 and yeah so it's just i don't know it's sad so all that being said i you know my point is just

00:59:38.160 to say that you know you know god the same god who predestines um the ends who he's going to save

00:59:45.540 he doesn't save arbitrarily right you know that romans 10 14 how would they believe unless they

00:59:50.720 hear and how would they hear unless someone preaches to them and so so i think it's safe

00:59:55.140 to say that at this you know god is sovereign over salvation and there there are some one-offs

01:00:01.020 But I believe that by and large, they are exceedingly rare. 0.95

01:00:04.740 You're Judas type of person.

01:00:06.980 I think that by and large, the radical majority is that if someone is submersed in the hearing of the word of God in the home and in the church, in their education, that God's going to save them.

01:00:24.040 And again, it's not a works-based salvation.

01:00:25.940 It's not if I do that, God will give me salvation.

01:00:28.480 It's exactly the opposite.

01:00:30.120 it switch it around and say um i am only doing this so it's not if i do this god owes salvation

01:00:37.680 to my children no it's if i do this it's only because god gave me the grace to do it

01:00:43.820 and god gave me the grace to do it because he determined before the foundations of the world

01:00:49.520 were laid to save this child and therefore he he determined the means of their salvation and

01:00:55.440 supplied the grace to me as their father or their mother in order to to be that means and so

01:01:01.560 anyway so all all that being said are there any final thoughts that you have about family worship

01:01:07.220 or family integrated worship in church or tyranny any of these things yeah scripture is sufficient

01:01:15.680 god has given us an eternal testimony it's all we need it's we should we should look there for

01:01:21.460 everything and not to the world. Amen. Tell us about your book one more time, the vaccine one.

01:01:28.960 Yeah. So this is a book called Forced Vaccinations, Thinking Biblically. And, you know, 0.53

01:01:37.340 I walked through various issues, just giving, I believe, biblical counsel for all these things.

01:01:44.740 The principle, the primary principle is that God owns your body and that he has given you jurisdiction over it and that the Bible makes it very clear that you can only do good to your body.

01:02:00.380 There's a chapter in here also about lies, dealing with lies.

01:02:06.200 Do you believe that these vaccine mandates are based on lies and what you do about that?

01:02:11.060 So I address that as well.

01:02:12.800 um but it's it's a book to just help people think through a vaccine mandate

01:02:18.120 that's really good where can people find that at churchandfamilylife.com that's our website

01:02:25.060 churchandfamilylife.com great it sounds like you've uh sounds like you're writing a book

01:02:31.760 like once every couple months do you write it it sounds like you write pretty often

01:02:35.840 i've got i've got three more that that are i want to push out in the next in the coming months

01:02:42.660 um but that's really cool all right well thank you so much for coming on the show

01:02:48.400 and i hope that our listeners will be blessed by it and i i hope to get to do it again with

01:02:52.540 you sometime soon hey i'd love it joel thank you so much it was such a delight as a special thank

01:02:58.260 you for your gift of any amount we'll be happy to send you a free digital book from our store

01:03:02.560 to access this offer visit right response ministries.com slash offer we highly recommend

01:03:09.060 and Pastor Joel's book, Am I Truly Saved?

01:03:11.460 If you or someone you know has wrestled with doubts

01:03:13.740 about the love of God, this would be a great resource.

01:03:17.240 As a reminder, to get this offer,

01:03:18.720 go to rightresponseministries.com slash offer.

01:03:21.940 And thank you for your generous support.

The NXR Podcast - November 10, 2021

THEOLOGY APPLIED - Is ＂Children's Church＂ Biblical？

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